Go to Joseph: the patriarch of Egypt as a figure of Saint Joseph

“Go to Joseph” (in Latin, *ite ad Ioseph*) is the response given by the Pharaoh to the hungry Egyptians in Gn 41:55: he sends them to the patriarch Joseph, son of Jacob, who was managing Egypt’s granaries during years of famine. The Catholic tradition has applied this phrase to Saint Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary, because the Joseph of Egypt is a type (figure) of the Joseph of Nazareth: just as the former preserved the wheat that saved a people from death, the latter preserved the Living Bread descended from heaven, Jesus Christ. That is why the Church continues to repeat, to anyone passing through any need, the Pharaoh’s order: go to Joseph.

This article traces the phrase in its original Hebrew and ancient versions, the typological parallels between the two Joses, and the interpretation of this reading within the Magisterium, from Pius IX to Francis. It is part of our dossier on Josefology, Catholic theology of Saint Joseph.

The Genesis phrase in its original language

In the Hebrew text of Gn 41:55, when the people cry out for bread, the Pharaoh responds: לְכוּ אֶל־יוֹסֵף אֲשֶׁר־יֹאמַר לָכֶם תַּעֲשׂוּ (*lekhú el-Yoséf, asher-yomar lakhem taasú*), literally “Go to Joseph, who will tell you what to do”. The Septuagint translates: Πορεύεσθε πρὸς Ιωσηφ, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν εἴπῃ ὑμῖν, ποιήσατε (“Go to Joseph, and whatever he tells you, do”). The New Vulgate retains the Latin formulation that became proverbial: *Ite ad Ioseph et, quidquid vobis dixerit, facite*.

The Christian ear immediately recognizes an echo. In Cana, Mary tells the servants: ὅ τι ἂν λέγῃ ὑμῖν ποιήσατε (“Whatever he tells you, do”) (Jn 2:5). The structure is the same as the Pharaoh’s phrase in Greek translation. In the Old Testament, a pagan king points to Joseph and orders obedience to him. In the New, the Mother points to Jesus and commands obedience to Him. Between the two phrases lies Nazareth, where the very Word incarnate chose to obey Joseph and Mary (Lk 2:51). The spiritual tradition savored this encounter: going to Joseph is always, ultimately, being led to do what Jesus says.

Joseph of Egypt and Saint Joseph: Typological Parallels

Typology is not a mere devotional ornament. It belongs to the very biblical corpus about Saint Joseph: Scripture speaks little of him, but it offers, in the story of Patriarch Joseph (Gn 37-50), the prophetic mold for his mission. The parallels are numerous and precise:

• Name and lineage. Both are named Joseph, a name linked to the verb “to add” in Scripture (Gn 30,24), and both are sons of Jacob (Gn 37,2 and Mt 1,16).
• Dreams. The patriarch is the dreamer who interprets Pharaoh’s dreams. Saint Joseph receives in dreams, four times, God’s orders regarding the Child and His Mother (Mt 1,20 and Mt 2,13.19.22), as shown in our study on Joseph’s dreams.
• Chastity. The first Joseph keeps his chastity before Potiphar’s wife (Gn 39). The second lives a virgin marriage with the Mother of God, and is called by tradition “chaste husband.”
• Egypt. One descends to Egypt as a slave and becomes there a savior’s instrument. The other goes down to Egypt as a fugitive to save the Savior (Mt 2,13-15).
• God-given fatherhood. The patriarch declares that God made him “father” to Pharaoh and lord over all his house (Gn 45,8). Saint Joseph receives from God a true fatherhood over Jesus, which John Paul II describes thus: “His fatherhood, however, is not merely ‘apparent’ or only ‘substitute’; but it is fully authentic human fatherhood, the authenticity of the paternal mission within the family” (Redemptoris custos, n. 21).
• Guardianship of grain and bread. The first Joseph opens the granaries and feeds the hungry. The second guards and sustains, through his work, him who will say of himself, ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven’ (Jn 6,51). The keeper of wheat prefigures the keeper of bread.

Tipological interpretation in tradition and magisterium

This interpretation has developed through prayer, liturgy, and preaching within the Church, which has become accustomed to applying the *ite ad Ioseph* to Mary’s husband. However, it was modern pontifical teaching that gave it formal shape. On December 8, 1870, with the decree Quemadmodum Deus, by which Pius IX declared Saint Joseph patron of the Universal Church, the text opens precisely with typology:

Just as God chose Jacob, patriarch and progenitor, to be the guardian of all Egypt’s grain for the people, so too, in the fullness of time, when the Son of God, the world’s Savior, was to be sent down to earth, God chose another Joseph, who would prefigure this first by being made Lord and Head of his house and the keeper of his most precious treasures. (Quemadmodum Deus, ASS 6, p. 193)

In a literal translation: Just as God had constituted that Joseph, generated by the patriarch Jacob, as overseer of all the land of Egypt to guard the wheat destined for the people, so, as the fullness of time approached when he was about to send his Son, the Unique One, the Savior of the world, to the earth, he chose another Joseph, from whom the first had been a type, made him lord and prince over his house and possession, and elected him guardian of his chief treasures. Pope John Paul II recalls this gesture: “In difficult times for the Church, Pius IX, desiring to entrust her to the special protection of the Holy Patriarch Joseph, declared him ‘Patron of the Catholic Church'” (Redemptoris custos, n. 28). We delve into this title in the article on Saint Joseph as Patron of the Church.Nineteen years later, Leo XIII returned to the typology in his encyclical Quamquam pluries (August 15, 1889), the first major doctrinal document on Saint Joseph: “The Joseph of ancient times, son of the patriarch Jacob, was a type of St. Joseph, and the first, by his glory, prefigured the greatness of the future guardian of the Holy Family” (Quamquam pluries, n. 4). That is to say, the Joseph of ancient times, son of the patriarch Jacob, was a type of Saint Joseph, and the first, through his glory, foreshadowed the greatness of the future guardian of the Holy Family. In the same encyclical, Leo XIII draws out the ecclesial consequence from the figure: the divine home that Joseph directed with the authority of a father contained within itself the nascent Church, and therefore it is fitting for him to now protect, through his celestial patronage, the Church of Christ (cf. Quamquam pluries, n. 3).Pope John Paul II, in his Exhortation Redemptoris custos (1989), articulates the theological content of this guardianship: “St. Joseph was called by God to serve directly the Person and mission of Jesus, through the exercise of his paternity: in this way, precisely, he ‘cooperates in the great mystery of Redemption, when the fullness of time has come,’ and is truly ‘minister of salvation'” (Redemptoris custos, n. 8). The expression “minister of salvation,” inherited from St. John Chrysostom, entered in 2021 into the litany of Saint Joseph as the invocation Minister salutis, alongside Custos Redemptoris and Fulcimen in difficultatibus, a bulwark in times of difficulty, as per the letter from the Congregation for Divine Worship dated May 1, 2021. Francis, in turn, situates Joseph precisely at the juncture between the two Testaments: “As descendant of David (cf. Mt 1, 16.20), from whose root Jesus was to come according to the promise made to the king by the prophet Nathan (cf. 2 Sam 7), and as husband of Mary of Nazareth, St. Joseph constitutes the hinge that joins the Old and New Testaments” (Patris corde, n. 1). Type and antitype belong, each in their own way, to the same history of salvation.How do we go to Joseph today?What does “going to Joseph” in concrete Christian life mean? It first means recognizing that God willed to place a man as steward of His goods. In Egypt, no one received wheat unless passing through Joseph. In the economy of grace, God does not need intermediaries, but He chose to use them: He entrusted Joseph with His Son and His Mother, the chief treasures (principalium thesaurorum), as the decree of Pius IX says. Recalling his intercession does not divert from Christ, it leads to Christ, just as Marian devotion. Francis summarizes the experience of twenty centuries by saying that everyone can find in Saint Joseph “an intercessor, a support and a guide in times of difficulty” (Patris corde, prologue).It also means imitating what is contemplated. Joseph of Egypt forgave his brothers and provided for their sustenance. Joseph of Nazareth obeyed promptly, worked, remained silent, and served. Going to Joseph learns the diligent faith of “did as the angel of the Lord commanded him” (Mt 1:24, cited in Redemptoris custos, n. 1). This is the spirit of the consecration to Saint Joseph: surrendering to his paternal care to be led, with Mary, to Jesus.

It means, ultimately, to hear the whole phrase from the pharaoh. The text does not say simply “go to Joseph,” it says “go to Joseph and do what he tells you.” Everything that Joseph “tells” is said through his life: he points to the Child who saved us. The *ite ad Ioseph* of Genesis flows into “do what He tells you” of Cana. Going to the guardian of the wheat meant surviving a seven-year famine. Going to the guardian of the Living Bread means finding him who satisfies for eternal life.

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